Display caption

The meaning and source of this painting of an enslaved woman and her child are obscure. It may relate to French Orientalist paintings of captive women, a subject perhaps inspired by William Richmond’s visit to the Middle East in 1885. Slavery also became a popular subject in the 1880s for British painters as increasing numbers of them chose to study art in France. The outbreak of a number of moral panics in the 1880s, focusing on the victimisation of women and children by abusive men, also gave this type of painting contemporary significance.